Weston’s search

*All names have been changed.

Search goal: Identify Weston’s biological parents

Weston’s wife reached out recently (with his permission) for help with his search for his biological parents. Weston had some non identifying information about his parents, but no first or last names. He had also taken a DNA test with 23andMe and uploaded to MyHeritage, Gedmatch and FamilyTreeDNA. Across all the sites, he had no matches closer than about 160cm. Weston had applied for a copy of his original birth registration and had an AncestryDNA kit on the way as well in hopes there would be better matches there.

We set things up so I was able to take a look at the matches across all the sites. The matches seemed to be best on FamilyTreeDNA so I started there and hopped back and forth as needed. I was able to find the first common ancestor couple fairly quickly, connecting one match on FTDNA, one on Gedmatch, and one on MyHeritage. However the common ancestor couple had been born in the 1830s in Ontario, so we were going back quite a ways. The matches were all connected by the last name Beaumont.

I also kept the trees of all the closer matches (80-160cm) matches open while I worked so I could keep an eye on last names.

For the matches on 23andMe, I made a spreadsheet of all the matches on the first page of Weston’s results, and sorted the matches into groups and tried to find their trees using their profile info. Many of the matches on 23andMe were from the Beaumont family. Using one match from 23andMe and another from FamilyTreeDNA, I was able to find a second common ancestor couple- the Kingsleys- also born in the 1830s, across the pond in Northern Ireland.

For this search I also did a lot of “tree surfing”, which is where I just browse through trees and look for couples that connect the common ancestor pairs I’ve found. I have a knack for remembering surnames while researching, especially if they are unique, so often this works in my favor. I was about to begin to paint the shared chromosome segments of Weston’s matches to help separate the parent sides, when I saw a name while tree surfing that caught my eye.

One of the daughters of the Kingsley common ancestor couple had married someone with the last name Houston. I remembered that one of the closer FTDNA matches had a Houston in their family tree, and sure enough, their ancestor was a sibling of the Houston that had married into the Kingsley family. I had found a union couple, and could start building the tree back down.

From here, the findings happened quickly. The Houston/Kingsley union couple had a son that had married a granddaughter of the Beaumont common ancestor couple. Based on their ages I knew the Houston/Beaumont union couple was going to be one of Weston’s grandparent sets.

Sure enough, I then found a wedding announcement for John Houston, one of the sons of the Houston/Beaumont couple. I was able to tie in another closer match from FTDNA with John’s wife Sandra, and I knew for sure that I had found Weston’s biological parents, as we knew they had been married at one point. All the non-identifying information lined up with my tree findings.

Unfortunately Sandra had passed away, but John was still alive, and Weston had three full siblings as well. I was able to find one sibling who had an account on Ancestry, and when Weston reached out, it was a pleasant surprise to find out they had known about him all along. Weston looks forward to getting to know his new family members, and is amazed that this search took less than 24 hours despite the lack of information known and the low DNA matches!